Hamburg, AUTUMN 2015. People arriving every day. Volunteers autonomously coordinate the arrival and departure of hundreds of refugees from daytime until late at night. Those who will stay in Hamburg are forced into
makeshift housing at the outskirts of the city. There, they will live under inhumane conditions in tents, or are crammed into uncleaned, decrepit hardware stores. But wherever displaced people lay their heads at night, they are confronted with a lack of care for their basic needs: health services, hygiene, food, or just getting the opportunity to meaningfully participate in life as new residents of Hamburg — all of these things are kept scarce. At the same time, thousands of people are active as volunteers; they collect and sort clothes, hand out food, teach language courses, saying in big and small ways ›you are welcome here!‹. Meanwhile the Romani people squatting Michel church continue their fight against the state-mandated deportations of their family members to countries where they face systematic persecution. For two-and-a-half years now, the group ›Lampedusa in Hamburg‹ has been fighting for equal rights, which are still denied to them. For refugees, this is an acute emergency. Without their self-help, self-organization, and without the assistance of those in solidarity with refugees, the situation would be much worse.
What are the authorities doing to help? Where is the Senate? Since the beginning of this year at the latest, the governing parties knew that the numbers of refugees will increase massively. Nevertheless, Rot-Grün describes the hardship of the people, the lacking organization and the disgraceful conditions as inevitable! But these pacifications do not help. The dramatic scenes happenig now in Hamburg are nourishing for those who say ›there is really absolutely nothing more that can be done.‹

Germany. Public opinion is dominated by catastrophizing rhetoric. CDU, SPD, and the Green Party push their strict new asylum laws through the parliaments, in spite of constantly referring to the German constitution. The legally acceptable living standards for refugees are continually lowered, and the concept of ›safe countries‹ is used as a wedge to divide people in need into artificial categories: ›good‹ versus ›bad‹ migrants. The new asylum law thus functions as a direct challenge to the asylum rights of Romani people, who face systemic discrimination and ostracism in their countries of origin. For months now, extremist right rhetoric has been allowed to overwhelm nationwide public discourse. Undifferentiated fears are stoked and enabled to grow. But this is not all: Almost every day, buildings burn. And meanwhile, CSU, AfD, and PEGIDA shamelessly engage in a race to the bottom, trying to outdo each other in racist pandering.

Europe. People find their ways north, fleeing from from war, violence, political persecution, discrimination, and poverty. No matter their exact situation, each of them simply hopes for a better life. With persistence, the migration movement enforces the freedom of movement. But, they are still forced to cross the sea under dangerous and life-threatening conditions; they are still forced to crawl through barbed-wire fences; and they are still forced to suffer arbitrary police violence. By manufacturing this harsh situation, the governing parties send a clear message to the refugees: ›You are not welcome here.‹ While politicians pay lip service to human rights and historical challenges, they command military missions in the Mediterranean Sea and arrange bloody deals with dictators and authoritarian regimes, like Al-Baschir in Sudan or Erdoğan in Turkey.

Hunger laws, mismanagement and warships. These are the answers to the flight of millions of people to escape violence and poverty, and to achieve a better life. They would like us to think of this as a “refugee crisis”. But, the people who come here are not the crisis. The crisis has been politically manufactured: Today, the global distribution of wealth is more unequal than ever before in human history. As a consequence of capitalism, we as people are only regarded in terms of our economic value, as “human resources” which are more or less capable of generating profit. And because of nationalist mind-sets, human rights are considered to be dependent upon the passports people hold as a consequence of their birthplaces. This reduces our heritage into a gamble. And we are denied equal rights because of it. Racism generates mobs full of hatred, who see as their enemies the people who are already excluded from society; the threats they rail against are illusory. Between these racist, nationalist, and capitalistic ideologies there is little space for genuine solidarity between hundreds of thousands of people.

The momentary situation poses the question as to what kind of society we want to live in, and does so in very concrete ways: How will we choose to handle a situation, in which people are forced to sleep in tents at sub-zero temperatures, while, at the same time, up to one million square meter of office space are still vacant? How will we choose to deal with the fact that some residents of Hamburg are allowed to go to school and work, while others are denied these fundamental rights? What do we do, when people in our city have to be afraid of police stops, searches, and deportations, only because they do not have German passports? Will we choose to keep quiet, when people who live with us in this city are treated unfairly?

We have decided: We want a city for everybody! A city with equal rights, no matter which papers a person holds! A city in which we stand side-by-side: together with Lampedusa in Hamburg, with Romano Jekipe Ano Hamburg, with the protests of the people living in the camps! A city in which each resident is considered a neighbor, and that is focused on the needs of its residents, instead of spending billions for the Olympic Games. For weeks, thousands of people have filled the slogan ›Refugees Welcome‹ with life. Thousands and thousands have worked cooperatively to show how our city looks when we stand together, to pursue our vision of a better life for all. Let‘s take a step forward and continue! Let‘s change our city! Let‘s make Hamburg into a place, in which we unconditionally declare: All Migrants and Refugees Welcome – Equal Rights for All!

Let’s be neighbors: Housing in apartments!
No isolation in tents, warehouses and mass-camps!

Migration happens: Freedom of movement
is a human right! Right to stay for everyone!
Against defining asylum down; No one is a ›bad‹ migrant; stop deportations!

Make solidarity practical: Support the migrant struggles! For the right to full participation in society!

Stand up & come meet us!

If you want to subscribe the call – as a group or as a single person- write us to: nevermindpapers@riseup.net